Whisperings
by Starlit Sea
Summary: The Great Gatsby Fusion: If this is how obsession feels, like tides and foam-rimmed waves that surge and thrust ceaselessly, mindless calamity consuming what is true and mundane and manmade, and beneath the light of sun or the light of a tempest, the blue shimmers bluer and angrier, moaning for the ethereal calm —he thinks he is a madman for he understands how Gatsby feels.


On a summer day when the sky was opalescent with cooling mist, father took his own life.

The gardens shone blue and the branches of the lonely tree squeaked in mourning as father's tight, white-boned knuckles wrapped around the searing rope as if he was begging with tears in his eyes for leverage —as if the man pleaded and wheezed for hope.

What a wrenthed feeling hope was, as sweet as sugar and as the beads of sweat that stream from your brow down to your bruised hands, calloused from the trials of good, honest work —or in father's case, from holding onto the knot until the gargling of his throat reaches its climax and his neck snaps like the twig beneath his son's feet.

It was grim and rainy weather and the shallow heavens were brilliant with the whitest of thunders, their song terrifying and shrill, and mother had dolled her body in the skirts her lover gifted her and together, two whisperings of total black and fancy abyss, mounted on their carriage.

As the wind blew and hissed, bearing emerald leaves and blueberries and mother's wrinkled rose-petals, the boy watched in silence the fall of the man; he remembers father's brown Italian leather shoes and how they had spun like a careless silver platter until the ankles turned a lifeless purplish pale.

He was young, only a boy, when he received the wrath of God —the wrath of his servants— and its crimson stung him deeply, to the marrow of his bones, as the lashes were icy and hot at the same time, reeking of metal, and the gravel ruined his knees.

* * *

During the daytime, he wipes the coal-coloured sweat from his neck and ensures his shirt is neat enough for Dr Eckleburg to allow him to escape from the valley of ashes, his cap hiding his brow and warming the tips of his ears; the black endlessness of furnaces where coal is as evergreen as warm soup and fresh bread is at the city has been a home to many newsboys.

It's not a job that pays for one's survival but he at least manages a clean set of clothes, a dagger and a book. As a former aristocrat, it is imperative he is able to sprout the right words to the right costumers, no matter how greasy their hands may be or what perversions may lurk behind their smiles.

During the night, the rats assemble for a fight; for brawls within the narrowness of alleys and underneath the moonlight, street-wise orphans bleeding for the last crumb.

His toes lolled against the stinking boats and the juice of his apple dripped into the water; he watched as the newsies drowned themselves in ale, he watched as sailors in their prim and proper uniforms shared passionate caresses with their girlfriends and he watched as the currents grew in tenacity, lonely and angry and thirsty for a change.

That night, Karlheinz Sakamaki approached him, offering the chance of revival.

* * *

"I'm Yui. Yui Komori" introduced the girl and he blinked at surprise —amidst the discordant communion of bold-lipped women who rejuvenate the blood within their veins by dancing the Charleston upon tiled, turquoise-sloshed floors and pose with lax, slouching spines, shy girls were scarce.

Jordan held the trim wrist of a small, slender girl dressed in a sheath of golden satin, the rosy translucence pronouncing her long, swan-like neck as it melted over her tensed shoulders like fine, lace drapery.

Her smile was timid and her eyes drifted from Jordan to the white, sticky gloves the servants wore, her irises flaunting the razzle-dazzle sheen of a jewel he doesn't know the name of and wafting the frail innocence of a shivering lamb —the peopleness that bombards Gatsby's home almost every night is overflowing with an overwhelming jitter akin to a kaleidoscope of butterflies swarming the bellies of young men and young women, victims of Gatsby's faceless elegance, moths enchanted by a phantom's glittering opulence.

* * *

Fireworks of banana-yellow and mint-green scorch the sky as fluorescent streamers sprinkle the passing hors d'oeuvres like a snowfall of glitter that clouds his view of the tremulous emerald beam atop Tom Buchanan's estate. He gulps his drink and the Greek olive within with one, sour-sweet swallow and as wild couples of golden-hatted and high-bouncing lovers gorge themselves in blaring singing and dancing as the servants are squeezed between hot-blooded, newly-rich bodies and the band hollers with decibels of trombone and bass and trumpets.

He watches, terribly appalled and simultaneously, curiously drawn to the dreams people own and how they manage their pain, dulling all their brokenness by drinking the inexhaustible, lively drops of Gatsby's imported whiskey as if they are healed —as if all their hope pumps not through goodness and effort but through the lie others crafted and they chose to purchase.

The girl, Yui, sits by the bar. Her tongue pokes through her pink lips and licks the maraschino cherry, but she doesn't gulp the martini.

She has a delicate charm, a simple sort of beauty, but he admires how endearingly singular the girl stands amongst the sea of girls who babble and gossip about _Gatsby this _ and _Gatsby_ _that_—they are a crowd of flimsy-brained fairies of either scalloped, tawny waves or raven, pin-straight tresses; a collection of identical porcelain figurines and he cannot tell between Bonnie or Betty or Becky, although one fancies her chignon up with a tiara of peacock feathers, the other adorns her neck with a choker of gilded Caribbean pearls and the next orders the bartenders in a nasal voice and with a swift flip of her manicured flamingo-pink nail.

* * *

He owns a small bookstore residing in the middle of a peaceful Polish shoemaker's shop and an Irishwoman's buzzing pub. It's a tiny, quaint thing with chapped, royal-blue French doors at the entrance and soundless mahogany floors that glimmer a clean cerise shade in the early mornings after he has finished his daily mopping.

The spicy aroma of tangerine and cinnamon is mixed with the lemon-freshness of polished wood and the desert-warm scent of old editions and autumn-yellowed pages, filled with treasures of ebony ink. He sets his mug upon his bureau, steaming with hot coffee, sweetened with hazelnuts and vanilla.

The bells chime and Yui Komori's vivid scent of a good apple-pie drives his gaze from _Paradise Lost_ to the white-dotted shawl and the well-coiffed curls underneath, indifferent eyes trailing the curve of her caramel garter, glued to the sight of the sprite-like girl who acknowledges him with a strawberry sweet smile and a wave of her maroon-clad hand; her bejewelled bracelet rings, princess-cut diamonds and morganite tears and minute spheres of sapphires colliding with her pink-dusted cheek.

"I haven't read it in quite a long time," her eyes are shielded by shadows and her voice is barely a whisper echoing in the shop, tones palpable enough to feel them ricochetting on the hairs of his neck. "Do you like it?"

"It is... enlightening."

She mumbles, agreeing. Gloved fingers worm over her heart, tracing through the gossamer the shape he recognises as a rosary. The glinting silver of the chain settles coldly against her throat and she swallows a bitter lump; memories, he guesses and he wonders whether the cross is a heavy burden, a pious necklace that stifles her, suffocates her, awaits to choke her little by little until she finally _snaps_ —she is not like his father.

* * *

He wasn't searching for her but the notches of her spine and the low curve of her back were hard to ignore.

She had a snug midnight-blue gown on this evening with sharp angles of crème mesh on her chest and down her navel, fringes of Swarovski-shine and notes of silver starlight pronouncing the slope of her back, a shadowy dip between the alabaster, _unblemished_ valley of her shoulder blades.

She turns the column of her neck, her collarbones adopting a chic carelessness that befits her; her lashes flutter unsure, full lips caught by her teeth and the strap's pigeon-grey feathers bother her nose as her shoulder meets her chin —her back curves, shoulder blades rippling.

Her eyes lock into his and he sees her pearly teeth reflecting the rainbow gleam of the chandeliers and the champagne glass.

* * *

Jordan ticks rhythmically the tips of her dull-dyed fingernails on her Murano beads, their crystal beauty obscured by her kohl-lined eyes' obvious, pepper-spicy enthusiasm.

They are seated at the French bistro her friends' friends recommended as a gruff, boyish promise and he cuts the woman with a curt scowl, "No, Jordan, I don't care about Gatsby or what history he had with that woman."

He savours the taste of bergamot and watches as the regularly listless woman thins her burgundy smile in an almost conspiratorial fashion.

"Perhaps, that might be true. But you do care about that Komori girl, correct? She is very sweet, indeed; reminds me of Nick with a little more braveness in her eye."

* * *

When Karlheinz Sakamaki's burly men arrive, armed with laden, cardboard boxes they were ordered to stock in his storage, he is never truly present —only a witness, a silhouette behind the door that waits and waits for them to finish.

Once they left, his aching feet led him to his desk; one hand's thumb pressed on the pain poisoning his temple as the other stomped on the ribbon's torn ends, the scarlet bookmark wailing against the glossy page.

She was livestock sold by her priest of a father and handed over to Karlheinz Sakamaki, who would handle her; shape her into the perfect bride for one of his sons.

He respects the patriarch yet he admits his sons are spoiled, monsters that emblazon the titles of noble scions, beasts more rotten than the apple that damned humanity. The six brothers have built a nefarious name in three different continents, here and Germany and Japan. Even doe-eyed girls of peppermint-laced breaths spread the rumours often —not as often as they conspire on and on about Gatsby and Dahlia or Daphne or whatever Buchanan's wife calls herself—, trembling hums of nocturnal terrors, demons that suckle on the blood they steal from the young girls they dirty.

_And now she thinks they're searching for her._

* * *

_She has a little more braveness in her eye. _

The girl might have been branded as meaningless livestock by her father, a lamb with the crimson stamp bleeding upon the ticket near her heart wandering the narrow streets of foreign ports.

The girl —this _girl_— managed to outsmart those who prided in wreaking havoc and suffering, she managed to escape their talons and crawled alive and breathing to the other side, where she was safe —it was common knowledge after all, how the Sakamakis avoided any contact with those not belonging to their clan.

And she had crossed the borders fearlessly with her chin held high.

If this is how obsession feels, like tides and foam-rimmed waves that surge and thrust ceaselessly, mindless calamity consuming what is true and mundane and manmade, and beneath the light of sun or the light of a tempest, the blue shimmers bluer and angrier, moaning for the ethereal calm —he thinks he is a madman for he understands how Gatsby feels.

_If this is betrayal_ —he is but a pebble, swimming along with the currents and having no fear weighing him down, pulling him back into the past.

* * *

The rich marigold of Gatsby's antique writing table is shadowed by her raisin-purple Grecian dress, the soft linen loosened and pooling around her heaving shoulders.

He learns her favourite colour is pink and that she loves apples and she has been praised for her cooking skills and he realises her voice ranges from light and dulcet to bright and laughing down to breathy and longing and demanding —she gasps and whispers, her lavender nails digging into his scalp, and her moans ring within Gatsby's vast golden library and darken the cacophony of youths smothering themselves in a cocktail-smelling frenzy.

She grips his jaw forward and he lavishes her with sloppy, open-mouthed kisses, trailing the expanse of flesh from her lips to her throat and above the yellow-topaz apple brooch she has pinned between her breasts; he learns she tastes like cognac-lacquered strawberries, rose Turkish delights and bubbling apple cider that enamels his tongue with the most lovely sort of hotness that reigns his mind the way it reigns his limbs; he thrusts faster and harder and deeper, clasping her thighs as she growls near the tendons of his sweat-beaded neck.

* * *

They stay in his tiny flat, seemingly spacious for the lack of ornate bronze and gold furniture and crimson Persian carpets.

He recites Macbeth and she busks at the diving sun, the buildings sizzling warm indigo and fuchsia as musicians lazed over the metal railings playing a soft saxophone, lulling the neighbourhood.

She offers the complementary of Dickinson's verses and her eyes are brilliant during the smothering summer heat.

She has the touch of a feather, the pads of her fingertips sliding over the scarred flesh of his shoulder blades.

"They're like an angel's wings."

* * *

"You are my temptation," he whispers on her temples. "Which is ironic, considering I though myself the Snake."

"And what did you think of me?" her smile is languid, teasing. It makes her look older than she is.

"You're getting bolder I see," he arches a brow, pointing towards the scratches on his collarbone, "You were Eve." She sinks on the mattress, her hands raised to play with his hair. He bends lower, his breath tickling her nose, "Beautiful Eve, whom Adam loved so dearly."

"And what did Adam do for Eve?"

"He sacrificed the world for her."

His words haunted him like a promise.

* * *

Her body is frail and limp against his door, her eyes red; "Gatsby's dead," he learns and he wonders why she cries for a man whom she never met and who was welcomed with destruction by his own hand —he never voices his concerns, not now when she cradles her head and fists her hair.

"I shouldn't be here," she mumbles, eyes boring into the nothingness yet he knows she sees them; and they're coming closer, "I shouldn't be here."

"They can't harm you—"

"I can't do this anymore," she rubs her nose on her sleeve and pushes him away, "He's dead. He's dead."

"Yui—"

"He's dead! Can you believe it? He's dead! And then —and then it's gonna, it's gonna be me —me!"

She breathes sharply and he takes her shoulders and she shakes and shakes, sobbing louder and biting her lips, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—" she continues and doesn't stop.

He watches, helpless.

_I won't leave you._

* * *

It might have been the break of dawn or early midnight when he woke up —she had slept on the far corner of his bed, her body shivering with a terrifying smallness, he thought the girl would shrink herself away from the terrors that were chasing her.

He remembers his mother leaving, how the mist had flowed along with the creases and the rustles of her beautiful dress.

He also remembers that Sakamaki's boxes remain in his storage.

* * *

If everyone knew how Gatsby looked and no one knew he was dead, they would have mistaken him for the very man; he wore a halo for a hat and a candy-cane cravat and a white tailored suit that shone white beneath the blistering, hot sun and the feral fire that consumed the little bookshop nestled between a Polish shoemaker's shop and an Irishwoman's pub. A beauty rested against him, the velvet of her teal cloche nuzzling with his bicep as if she was calling for her lover's attention, tendrils of raven hair shimmering with artificial light.

His arm wrapped around her waist, offering comfort to the girl who gazed with wide, mascara-black eyes as the fires were hushed by plummeting water, dimming to embers of pages and ashes of wood.

When the girl released a liquid, watery shudder, the could-have-been Gatsby escorted her to their car; it was a new model, striking platinum and open-roofed, parked on the street across the loud spectacle that began garnering people's wonder.

* * *

**A/N: I'm not sorry for creating this.**


End file.
